If you ask someone in the United States whether to reconsider their health insurance plan choices, they may sigh, roll their eyes, and offer a story about navigating a maze of deductibles, networks, and confusing brochures. In practice, most people end up doing the simplest thing possible: they stay in the same plan they are already in. Economists have long noticed this pattern. Even when plans raise their prices or competitors offer better deals, people tend to remain where they are. This raises a fascinating question: do people stay because switching is difficult, or because they genuinely prefer the plan they already have? A new study by the economist Prof. Ariel Pakes of Harvard University, and colleagues Prof. Mark Shepard and Prof. Jack Porter, digs into this puzzle and uncovers some surprising answers. Although the study uses sophisticated mathematical tools, the insights are straightforward and important for anyone interested in how health insurance markets work.

As the practice of psychotherapy increasingly embraces the spiritual dimensions of the human experience, therapists are investigating new ways to weave faith and meaning into healing. Dr Suzanne Coyle, a licensed pastoral counsellor and family therapist, explores the role of spirituality in psychotherapy and how this intersection can support the journey of healing. Her work provides practitioners with the tools and knowledge to meaningfully integrate spirituality into clinical practice.

We often take our bodies for granted, treating them as vehicles to get us through the day or as objects to manage and control. But author and Jungian Analyst Barbara Holifield’s book Being with the Body in Depth Psychology challenges this view, arguing that the body is the foundation of our sense of self and the lens through which we encounter the world. Depth psychology has seldom treated the body as an intrinsic aspect of our psychology, and when it has, it rarely delves into the body as experienced. Through in-depth case studies, Holifield’s two important chapters – Chapter 2, Sensing the Self, Sensing the World, and Chapter 4, Attaining Embodiment: A Developmental Perspective – explore how we come to feel at home in our bodies and why this matters for both psychological health and human growth.

In today’s world, the internet is more than a tool. It can be a place where friendships are built, identities are explored, and young people find connection. For teenagers, digital spaces are a huge component of their lives. However, the way we talk about online safety often feels like it belongs to another era, one rooted in adult fears rather than young people’s lived experiences. A project led by the Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University, in partnership with the PROJECT ROCKIT Foundation with funding from Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, set out to bridge this disconnect. Instead of telling young people how they “should” behave online, the researchers conducted a survey of 104 young people and workshops with 31 young Australians aged 12 to 17 which asked them directly: What does online safety mean to you? What do you wish adults understood? What would your ideal online world look like? How do you want to learn about online safety?

The results were eye-opening and led to the development of a framework to reimagine how online safety education for young people is designed and delivered.

In the United States, families that cross racial lines often attract admiration and curiosity. Such families are increasingly common, and they are seen by many as living proof that love conquers prejudice, and that the country is moving beyond its painful racial past. When a white mother cradles her brown-skinned baby, or a Black father teaches his lighter-skinned daughter to ride a bike, the image seems to embody progress and racial harmony. But as Professor Chandra Waring of the University of Massachusetts Lowell shows in her 2025 study, the story is far more complicated. Her article, titled “My Dad Is Racist as Hell: Navigating Racism, Monoracism, and White Privilege by Proxy in Multiracial Families,” reveals what really happens inside many multiracial households. Through interviews with 30 multiracial Americans, Waring reveals that love does not necessarily cancel racism. In fact, racism, and its quieter cousin, monoracism, often lives right inside these families.

Research from Professor Dr Susanne Maria Maurer, former chair of social pedagogy at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, reveals how social work institutions and practices serve as repositories of knowledge about historical struggles over class, gender, and race. She conceptualizes social work as both a “memory of conflicts” and an “open archive” that holds different answers to social problems from across history. Her work shows that to truly understand social work today we need to look at the ideas that were pushed aside and the ongoing debates that still shape how social workers do their jobs.

When we think of spies and their activities, we imagine trench coats, hidden cameras, and tense exchanges in safehouses. Hollywood has given us the daring adventures of James Bond and Jason Bourne, along with the clever trickery of films such as Argo. But behind the cinematic flair lies a quieter, more subtle reality: espionage often depends less on gadgets, weapons and car chases than on the delicate art of deception, an art rooted in psychology, perception, and human behaviour. This is the world explored by Dr. Rafael Lenzi, in a work developed at the Centre de Recherches Sémiotiques in Limoges, France. His study of Cold War espionage, drawing on declassified CIA manuals and philosophical theories of perception, reveals how deception is not just about tricking the eye, but about shaping the mind. In other words, spying succeeds not when someone fails to see, but when they see exactly what they expect to see, and therefore overlook the trickery in front of them.

In the Autumn of 2022, hopeful college students across the United States clicked through the questions on the Common Application, the digital gateway to more than one thousand colleges and universities. For the first time, alongside their grades, essays, and extracurricular lists, applicants had the chance to provide their gender and pronouns. These questions might seem a small detail, tucked between test scores and teacher recommendations, but their impact is enormous. They mark a turning point in higher education, one where students are able to represent themselves more authentically. Thanks to the work of Dr. Genny Beemyn of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Dr. Abbie Goldberg of Clark University, we now have the first large-scale glimpse into how a new generation of young people is reshaping society’s understanding of gender.

Despite decades of awareness about gender equality, a persistent pleasure gap remains between women and men in sexual encounters, with women experiencing significantly fewer orgasms and less sexual pleasure. It is important to note that this gender difference exists primarily in contexts where women have sex with men, while women who have sex with women tend to experience more orgasms and sexual pleasure. Since the gendered pleasure gap cannot be explained by biological factors, researchers continue investigating hidden sociocultural forces that perpetuate this inequality. Two complementary studies from Tanja Oschatz at Johannes Gutenberg University and her colleagues reveal previously overlooked contributors to this gap: women’s performance of sexual emotional labor in intimate relationships and biased media representations of sexual pleasure.

Research from communication scholars at The Ohio State University reveals fascinating new insights about the dynamics of conversations about race-related issues in the USA. Two complementary studies show that White participants expected more negative outcomes and were more likely to avoid conversations with fellow White people from different political parties than with Black people from different parties. The findings challenge assumptions about racial identity and suggest that partisan divisions have become more influential than racial divisions in shaping willingness to engage in difficult conversations.